


Intergalactic

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Play, Bazine kind of ends up stealing the scene she's in but I'm not fighting it, Cunnilingus, F/M, I was enabled into this I swear, London, Masturbation in Shower, Pining, Rey works at Lush and beauty blogs, Smut, a lot of name-dropping Lush products, not cheating but he is in a relationship when they meet, this is not sponsored content i swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-08 01:25:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17376914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: Reylo. Self-care. Sex Bombs.Rey is an employee at the Oxford Street Lush Store, Ben is a clueless boyfriend wandering in to find a gift at the request of his girlfriend, Bazine. He's in desperate need of some help; luckily Rey gives excellent customer service.He will return to the store, mysteriously lacking a girlfriend and obtaining a lengthier wishlist, within the week.





	1. you imagine an ocean (salt)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dankobah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dankobah/gifts).



> Inspired by a dumb twitter joke, enabled by Luna, written for readers like you. 
> 
> This is not a Lush-sponsored story. 
> 
> Yet.

Flushed, wet thighs poke out of the bathwater, swirling between them is a galaxy of purple and pink that is so divinely feminine he feels he can only approach this scene on his knees. She looks powerful, in her tub of starlight. He'd do a lot to make her happy.

Then there’s a blare of a phone ringing from across the office; jerking him swiftly out of this distracting scenario spiraling into a fantasy.

Ben stares at his phone, and the bathing thighs pictured on it, with a look of pure befuddlement. He wasn’t one for receiving _softcore porn_ at work, from his girlfriend, no less; especially when the thighs pictured were too remarkably tan to be her own.

Mixed signals. Erotic, but not Bazine. But _from_ Bazine, so he isn't doing anything wrong. A test?

He just stares at those reclining legs, slippery and strong, for longer than he should; tapping the screen so it re-illuminates after dimming a few times. 

The image, a screenshot she just texted him, is split with another notification:

**Bazine: Rough day :(**

So she wants to take a bath? He’s not stopping her. He’s at work, it’s her body, there’s a tub in her own apartment…

She does not wait for his response:

**Bazine: You know what will make it better?**

He lets out a frustrated sigh. It’s already here, those stranger’s legs snapping shut like a trap on a mouse's neck. The catch.

Ben rubs the back of his neck. She always seems to trigger this weird push-pull; pushing him away into oncoming traffic, pulling him back by the throat.

He glances at the cut-off caption under the screenshotted post:

“ _I’m just LOVING my Twilight Bath bomb from @Lu_ **_[...]_ ** _”_

He’s not...averse to dropping gifts on his girlfriends: he likes it, he likes how women respond to it, but having a wishlist shoved under his nose before he goes home is a hard way to feel like he’s doing something particularly special. It was as romantic as picking her up a pair of socks or a bottle of olive oil she needed to prepare dinner; yes, he’d do it because she asked, but he’s delivering exactly what she asked for with no surprise or his own genuine _thought_ put into it. He doesn’t feel as though he’s in a relationship as much as he is cast in _playing someone who is_ by Bazine.

He’s dating a girl who knows what she wants; he’ll give her that, and the credit for it, and for the millionth time, just about anything she asks for.

With about as much passion as a man going to Boots to pick up some tampax.

**Ben: What do you want me to get?**

As though asking for the brand of that olive oil, those tampons. What he’s really wondering is if he can change his commute to go to the one at Waterloo Station instead of having to haul his ass over to Oxford Street...

**Bazine: Oxford Street has the best selection.**

His brow twitches with annoyance at that one. He stares at the photo as the message slides away from it. Long legs. Strong. Murky, mysterious water he wants his head to emerge from and rise up over those legs, tasting of perfume and galaxy.

His girlfriend would be pretty in that tub, but he has a hard time being in that tub with her and not...those tan legs. Looking closer, they’re beautifully freckled. Maybe this is a sign. An itch. He’s felt for a while-

**Bazine: But I love it when you surprise me…**

As if she ever gave him the chance.

_Then let me actually fucking surprise you._

 

* * *

 

Ben’s not above getting basic directions from a salesgirl when he’s this lost out of his fucking mind, like he is now.

He’d be too skittish for it in a quiet shop, waving off the help; but not here. At a certain point his shyness forces him to seek human contact in a ‘lesser of two evils’ situation. To be able to withstand the crush of shoppers, he will have a civil conversation with someone who works in the shop. One far outweighs the other.

It’s too crowded and too full of _stuff_ for him to know what decision to make. Some products seem chillingly unromantic; toothpastes, lip scrubs, exfoliants. Beauty items always came with a loaded sense of suggestion. Was skincare passive-aggressive? Would Bazine kill him for insulting her feet if he got a lotion for them?

Fate places a capable employee in his hands.

This one is his rescuer, and even though all of the employees he’s encountered with Bazine at Lush have been pretty: she is the kind of pretty to him that makes the eye experience a sigh of relief when it lands on her.

“What do you normally use?” she points at his cheek, her smile bright and cheery.

His eyes flicker to a mirror in the depths of the closest shelf, trying to see what she sees, which is at least an intermediate knowledge of the product. 

His eyelids flutter stupidly back at him. “I don’t use product from here, but thank you.”

Ben’s secretly a little bit of a grooming nut, so there is an element of flattery to her question. But he’d never talk about his routine with anyone. Never admit it.

She laughs, “sorry to assume. Can I help you find anything?”

After a moment spent looking at her too long, his eyes flicker to her name badge.

“Rey?”

“Yeah?”

Her grin cracks from perky to wry with a defined wickedness.

He can’t help but mirror it.

“Ben,” he pulls out his phone, speaking as he searches for the picture he received this afternoon. “I’m here for a gift. I was sent...inspiration, shall we say, from my partner. She sent me this post…”

He holds up his phone: the candlelit bath, the legs, the glitter.

Rey’s eyes nearly pop out of her skull.

_“Oh.”_

He looks again at the photo, terrified that he’s missed some satanic symbol or a horse’s decapitated head sitting in the bath, because she looks _mortified._ “I’m sorry, is it something I-”

Her legs, poking out from under her black apron, cross uncomfortably. He raises his eyebrows, looking at the freckles on her flexing thigh muscles, and something _clicks…_

Recognition.

“No,” she laughs awkwardly, shaking her head, “that’s just from _my_ instagram. I thought you might be playing a cruel joke.”

_“Oh,”_ he says back, and lets out a nervous breath, because the thighs in those pictures had been on his mind all afternoon, and now they had a face. “I didn’t know, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, a lot of us who work here post about the product on social media. Still, it’s funny. What are the chances.”

“Small world.”

There are better things to say; but he won't find them. Because it's better than saying what's on his mind;

_That bath looked like you were born in a potion containing a love spell. I don't know whether to drink you or rub you on my skin. Do you feel this too?_

“Definitely,” she nods, training her face back to friendly and professional. “Well, answers that question. _That_ was a Twilight bath bomb. We have a pre-wrapped gift set with a few Twilight products; they tend to feel like a complete gesture, if you’re making one when they come packaged like that. Birthday? Anniversary?”

“Not particularly a momentous occasion,” he follows her to the stacks of colorful boxes across the sale room. “She just wanted a present.”

She smirks at him.

“You’re such a good boyfriend. She’s lucky.”

He’s not really, if he’s so eagerly searching for a polite way to ask if they can take this to a more private back storeroom so he can kiss all over those thighs.

He ignores the stack of gifts that are already picked out, requiring no extra thought from him, and probably exactly what Bazine wanted. He’s not ready for this to be done.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

He stuffs his hands into his suit pockets. She raises her eyebrows.

“You should give _jewelry_ for an apology, typically.”

She’s sharp, he likes it, and he’s annoyed with being here, so he might as well have some fun. Bazine could be a shameless flirt; and there was more than one occasion where she posed a third party flirting with Ben like some kind of extension of her own pride.

Someone wanting what was hers made it more valuable.

He’s been so downtrodden lately, and he wants to feel valuable.

“She’s not in need of an apology. Just some spoiling.”

“Then you have come to right place.”

Rey winds backwards through the store’s many stacks and counters, like a scholar through an archive, and he only has to worry a minute at her precariously proximity to a display before he trusts her instincts to navigate them without crashing. She does, effortlessly.

“Typically, my game plan is when you’re getting a gift for a significant other, the easiest way is to follow your nose. What do you want her to smell like?”

She actually makes a lot of sense. He’d never considered this, and well, female grooming is a mystery to him. He and his girlfriend weren’t living together, they’d only been dating for four months, so her routine was as secretive as his was. Bazine once summed it up best while -scandalously- plucking her eyebrows before getting out of his car: “If you’re really doing it right: no one notices it.”

Like special effects in film. If he had dated her and only her in his life; based on their experiences he never would have known women actually grew hair on their legs.

Rey has her hand on a shelf of soaps. “Citrusy? Minty?”

“Um,” his eyes gravitate to a honeycomb pattern. She catches his gaze with a smile, selecting the bar.

“I use this for hand soap,” it’s in his palm now, innocuous, yet loaded with her. It takes a lot from him to not ask to smell it from the source: her skin.

“I think it’s too...rustic, for her,” he clears his throat, uncomfortable, and realizes he may have just insulted her. But she shrugs it off, grabbing an elderberry bar that is swirling purple and admittedly much more Bazine.

Still, he holds the honeyed scent closer to his nose and smells. It’s nice. Sweet, but not too sweet. Not too flowery.

“How strong is the scent on skin?”

She barely flinches, seeming to know full well what he’s doing, but she keeps her eyes locked on his. She raises her hand, fingers tucked delicately against her palm.

“Washed my hands before I came in two hours ago.”

Overcome by the offer, his nose rests on the heel of her hand, the bridge nudging along her middle and ring finger with a light sniff. The accidental touches sends lightning through him. She's soft, she's so soft.

The honey smell lingers, faintly, but pleasantly.

“But I’ve been handling product since then, so you may not smell it as strongly on me.”

“Not, it’s there,” he clears his throat, shifting his eyes from her hand to her face. “It’s definitely there.”

Her lips are pursed, conflicted.

“So there’s a hand soap,” he glances at the colorful bricks in front of them, “what do you use other ones for…”

He seems to be smart enough to not finish that thought. And yet Rey, in her uniform of all black; tank top, shorts, and apron, takes the baton and _runs with it._

“That’s a second date kind of question,” she murmurs softly, and a faint blush crosses her cheeks, but her smile is direct and wickedly so.

“Tell me about your instagram.”

She shakes her head. “I thought keeping my face out of it would give me some anonymity; but I ruined that for myself today. Puts the employee discount to use, and I have a lot of product, that’s for sure. It’s fun.”

“It certainly looks like it is.”

He wants to say more, wants to have what he says _mean_ more, but the more weight he puts on this first impression being meaningful, the more of a creep he’ll feel like later. If he can’t prove to her that he can respect his girlfriend, how is he ever going to prove that she could matter to him?

It was the trap of the overlap. You meet someone great while you’re with someone else that you were beginning to feel isn’t right for you; but what part of that is fate and what part of it is only seeing what you want to see? Leaping to Rey like a life raft wasn’t going to save him from drowning: it was just going to strand him from the boat he was already on out in open sea.

To chase down the sweet smell that’s making him dizzy, he picks up the elderberry soap.

It’s nice too. Again, a good fit that does conjure up Bazine.

But it’s not what he wants to keep smelling.

“How long have you been with your partner?”

“Four months,” he admits, “And I...have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Ah,” she taps the purple soap. “Balming over some growing pains?”

“No, I...this is what she wants. She texted me asking me to bring some stuff over.”

Rey’s face falls. “Is she okay?”

“She said she had a rough day…”

Wow. He still hasn’t even asked about that. He is a shitty boyfriend.

"But it's more that...I'm whipped?"

He cringes. That does not feel good to say out loud, but it's true.

"Hmm," she nods, "maybe in a good way. This would certainly cheer me up. Long bath, some self-care, it really makes me feel good.”

“I want to make her feel good.”

_I just want to make you feel good even more._

She keeps handing him soaps to smell. They're all good, they're all different places he could see himself. But Bazine is not eucalyptus and mint. She is not karma.

“I just...how strong is a relationship where you get exactly what you want?”

She examines his face carefully. “Are you... _getting_ exactly what you want?”

She looks so worried for him. She’s being more helpful than she needs to be, and he’s laying so much at the feet of a woman who has to be nice to him. Maybe the smells and the sparkles are deluding him: some feminine space of witchcraft.

She probably pities him.

He stops leaning so close to her.

“I thought I was. Yeah. Probably. You’re right. Growing pains.”

Rey looks more guarded now.

“The gift box, then, maybe an assortment of bath bombs?”

He nods, and she goes back to the display of wrapped boxes, scooping one up from a low shelf. He tries not to watch those thighs from behind as they tense in a low crouch.

He fails. He really, really fails.

“Can I grab,” he takes a tired breath. “Can I grab that honey soap, as well?”

She doesn’t look at him when she retrieves it from the shelf. She stands closer than she has to in order to slip it into his hand.

“Ben,” she tries, maybe to remind him that flirting with girls in shops doesn’t fix flawed relationships, “you should trust your feelings. I can’t tell you what they are. But I see a lot of loneliness in you.”

He takes the bar of soap carefully, trying not to fucking inhale it because of the way it makes him feel. Their hands touch. She shivers. He wants to grab her fingers and never let go.

One thing about his future is blindingly clear.

If he still has a girlfriend tomorrow: he’s a fucking idiot.

“Would you also want to try some samples?” she blurts out.

“Yes,” he answers automatically.

She nods efficiently and fills his bag with three little black cups with her neat handwriting on top:

_Dirty, Helping Hands,_ and _Karma Kream._

 

* * *

 

His hands twitch uncomfortably; Bazine is in her robe, smelling of Twilight, comfortably swirling a glass of wine and dressing him down like he is a particularly masochistic Ken Doll.

His hands smell of honey as she does it.

“You just keep looking at me like I’m going to break down, _enough,_ Ben. All I want to know is if it’s someone else, and maybe where she lives and what car does she drive.”

He shakes his head, somehow both of them able to eat and calmly talk even though mid-dinner he dropped the bomb that maybe they should see other people. She was composed as ever.

But it’s not an innocent question with her holding a steak knife like that.

“I think I could comfortably be in a relationship with you until I die. Sincerely. I just don’t think there’s a thing you want to learn from me, or a thing you won’t just tell me instead of waiting around for me to learn from you.”

“You never could keep up,” she smiles, and it’s affection he feels, but it’s not what he knows he has in him. It took one crowded, numb, tourist-filled walk from the shop to the station through Oxford Street to know what was within himself.

“I know this sentiment is very hollow,” and he doesn’t want it to be, because he means it, “But I would like to remain friends. I value you more than we’re compatible, if that makes sense.”

Bazine purses her lips, her first show of emotion over this discussion. “I don’t think anyone is, Ben, not with me at least. I enjoyed our relationship. If ‘friends’ means we don’t have sex and I get the occasional gift basket, sure, I could use more friends.”

He laughs. “I was never going to get at that heart of yours, was I?”

She smiles mysteriously, shrugging. “There isn’t one in there, Ben. I traded that for impeccable taste and a few others secrets that will never be shared with you. So that’s what you missed out on.”

“Those are valuable,” he agrees, kind of shocked even in their civil relationship things could remain so here. “Hopefully someone earns them.”

“No one needs to. They’re mine.”

The sphinx that is Bazine shares a glass of wine with him, quietly broken up, and the oddest part of none of it feels any different. Everything ended being fine about her day, she just already used the excuse that it was her birthday _-falsely-_ six weeks ago to get the same kind of gift out of him.

She was an evil genius, and maybe he deserved that, but he could feel the leather of his wallet relax in his back pocket because she had really done a number on him.

The dynamic was one he was reluctant to end because it was pleasant; just nothing that made him feel...desired. He’s kind of surprised, that just maybe, he and Bazine were better off as friends.

He doesn’t feel like he needs to race home, she doesn’t break something, they clear the table and fill up her dishwasher together, she hugs him when he leaves.

She has always been classy, hard to get to know, beautiful, and dignified. This doesn't feel like a failure as much as it feels like a cosmic shift. 

And he can't hate her; she unwittingly dropped _Rey_ into his lap. 

He honestly forgets that this is prompted by another girl until he is on his phone on the overground home; and there’s familiar, freckled skin on a newly-followed instagram:

_“Sex Bomb indeed. Just lounging in my @LushCo_ **_[...]_ ** _"_

Freckles, her bare shoulders, and crest of glitter sweeping over the tops of her breasts, which are hidden in opaque pink water. Rose petals litter the surface. A pair of lips smile invitingly at the top of the frame, coaxing, alluring.

He’s more of a shower guy, but he wants to lap liquified stardust off of her skin. He wants to soak with her in the mysterious brew that makes her so soft. He smells his wrist, layered heavily with a little too vigorous hand-washing before he went over to Bazine’s to drop off her gift basket.

He walks through the night entanglement-free.

Awakened by a pair of pretty eyes and the scent of honey.


	2. Star Light (Saber) Star Bright (Saber)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am accepting inquiries to become a Lush Brand Representative [@secretreylo](https://twitter.com/secretreylo) on twitter.

Rey has helped a lot of guys buy gifts for their girlfriends.

She’s been the secret female perspective that has unlocked successful Valentine’s Days, anniversaries, and birthdays for hundreds of women who will never know how clueless their boyfriends were when they walked into the store. The woman behind the curtain. How they would have only received a single bath bomb and a travel-sized shower gel for their troubles without her there, steering their partners in the right direction. She was an unknown but necessary presence: and she took the role seriously.

Vastly uncredited; shy of her own pats on the back. 

Such was the place of a retail worker; one she bore proudly, her duties sacred, her desire to make sure other women were happy and moisturized, while not a noble goal, was a valid one. The duality of self-care and spoiling. She never felt jealous, or left out, or disappointed.

Her time would come.

Even if it was an insecurity, _just a little bit,_ that she didn’t have someone even trying as little for her as these people were for their partners.

Though it has hardly ever made her question her career, her place in life, or her _sanity_ before now.

There is a line: and he crossed it when he nuzzled his nose to her hand and _sniffed_ like sex wafted from her skin.

He nudged that line, somehow stretching across the life line of her palm, and she was still quivering whenever she thought of it.

But when Ben is back a week later, walking through the door on a sunny afternoon, she wants to crawl under the counter. Because she hasn’t been able to kick his sad eyes and his smart mouth out of her head all week. Because she’s been spoiling herself a long time, and maybe she does want a boyfriend to make a gesture; even if she has to ask for it.

Because ripping her heart out and screwing it into a plastic tub of face lotion to chuck like a grenade at his head would be easier for her than helping this relationship thrive.

Flirting with her while she’s helping facilitate that he’s getting laid, well, the _nerve_ of Ben.

She is about to smack him with some cold, lower-tier customer service politeness, when he places his hands on the counter, his brow furrowed.

He looks...really distressed.

“I’m here for _me,”_ he informs her bluntly, before she can speak, in a low voice, “I don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”

She chokes on the icily friendly greeting she’s supposed to give him.

“Are you _okay?”_

He nods, looking guilty. “I’m fine. We’re fine. We...ironically she thanked me for the gift, and she said it symbolized us really getting what we wanted out of the relationship. I needed someone to care for. She can replace me with _anyone_ for what she wanted.”

Rey nods dumbly. She’s still not...entirely letting herself think that he came here to tell her this, as though this would come up naturally in a conversation with a salesgirl and he just wanted some charcoal tooth tabs.

“Is there anything you’re looking for here?” she mumbles, blinking at him.

He nods.

Her breath hisses out of her nose.

“Do you know what it is?”

He shakes his head.

“Not yet.”

“Well we have great unisex shaving products.”

_What the fuck, Rey?_

He clears his throat.

_“Honey.”_

“What?” she steps back, unable to remain calm for this very bizarre reality that is looking more and more like a fantasy she’s been having all week.

He’d come into the store, and sure, his shirt would be open like Fabio, and then he’d throw her onto the counter declaring his recent singleness, and then he’d rub lotion into her skin like anointing oil, and…

“That honey soap. To start, I’d like _more_ of it.”

“We also have…” she grabs a bar automatically in passing to place it in his basket of goodies, winding across the sales floor to a collection of jewel-toned bottles, “we have a shower gel called ‘Olive Branch’, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Depending on who it’s for,” he replies easily, slipping the bottle into his hand to read the description.

_My. He is coy._

She laughs, uncapping the sample.

“You have to smell,” she instructs, “it’s the whole reason to physically come into the store.”

“In my experience, there's a better reason.”

Her stomach flips a little bit, even though the words are cheesy, he is looking at her like they’re 100% genuine as he sniffs from the bottle without breaking eye contact.

“Smells good,” he confirms, “but who’s it for?”

She forces a laugh.

“Does the ex need an olive branch?”

What a remarkably not-smooth way to put out feelers. She'd feel ashamed if she was capable of it when he was looking at her like she hung the stars.

“Clean break,” he looks a little uncomfortable, “and she may have...knowing her, she picked out everything for us, including, I’m finding out, her break-up consolation prize.”

“What a woman,” Rey marvels, and appreciates her at least sending Ben back out into the wild.

He’s rubbing a dot of the gel onto the back of his hand with a circling thumb. He’s kind of mesmerizing to watch.

She also likes him while raising his hand to his nose to smell.

“What do you suggest?”

He glances at her.

She caps the shower gel pointedly.

“I don’t think you need _this,_ if you’re shopping with someone else in mind.”

She twists on her heel so her body swivels to face the other side of the store. When she moves towards it, he follows.

Obviously.

“Smell,” she unscrews another cap: a lotion.

Citrusy, a little sugary.

“What is it?”

_“Karma,”_ she intones, but at this point they’re having a hard time keeping straight faces. “We have Sleepy, Charity Pot, Elbow Grease…”

She could go on her tangent. She was a very good salesgirl. Karma for not cheating. Karma for not letting this take them somewhere they couldn’t go back from. Karma for coming back.

He gives her an odd look as he explores the same containers. She takes the lid from his hand to try and match his confused expression. “Oh, that’s the Twilight scent.”

“Bazine,” he blurts out, looking guilty, like he wasn’t supposed to smell that ever again.

Rey dips her fingers into the lotion. Bazine was not taking this from her.

“No, the smell helps with insomnia. It’s lavender. _I_ like it; I use it before I go to bed every night.”

He examines her quizzically, but also impressed.

“Just how much were you trying to make my ex smell exactly like you?”

She blushes.

“I-I use everything from the store. But Sleepy is the one I fall asleep smelling. So. Maybe. A little.”

He smiles down at her, even though she is too mortified to meet his eyes.

“Do you want to try it?”

“If your professional opinion would advise it.”

His tone is both grave and sly.

She is so caught.

With a soft noise, she touches his elbow.

“Um…”

_Nice one, Rey._

She swirls her Sleepy-dipped fingertips in a circle on the skin of his bare forearm. She is grateful for rolled shirtsleeves, mainly because he’s got great arms, and it means she can do this.

Which she technically does do a lot for other, less attractive patrons, but he doesn’t need to know that as she starts to knead the lotion into his skin.

He grunts a little, his muscles tensing as though resisting; but her fingers are strong and they go lax under her as his hand quivers for a second.

Just a split second.

And then he watches her hands work the cream over his skin, from wrist to just under his elbow.

She touches him tightly but delicately, focusing in the massage but also the ways her hands can move across the surface of his skin. Working a length from elbow to wrist. She was generous with the glob of lotion, so it takes a little longer than necessary to have him properly “test” it.

“Usually I just dot it, you know, where I’ll catch the scent. My hands, before bed. My chest.”

Feeling bold, she edges her middle finger under the line of her apron to demonstrate, between her breasts, and paints a little stripe so the scent resonates from herself as well.

His breath stutters for a moment, his heavy-lidded eyes dodging the bright rays of afternoon sun. From his height above her, the way he guards himself from it also shields her. She is protected in his shade.

And the now-strong scent radiating from his skin.

“Will that be all?” she asks quietly, while he considers her very carefully.

He bends his knees to pick up the shopping basket he has rested at her feet.

“Not nearly,” he informs her.

 

* * *

 

He lets her into the apartment after she knocks.

It takes about as long as the rest of her shift and a tube ride to get to him.

Part of her is paranoid as she enters: scanning the kitchen for signs of it being to competently stocked, a living room that is aptly decorated, a woman’s coat on the rack. Those telling signs that Ben was full of shit about his breakup.

But the place radiates bachelorhood, at least, without having to be a sty.

At least no one else living there.

And that’s all she really gets until he lifts her off the ground to kiss her.

“Waited for you,” he walks her backwards with an efficient grace, her scarf and jacket going flying, “needed you.”

She kisses back, because it feels like it’s enough to just be here.

“I’m here on a matter of grave importance,” she works the buttons of his shirt open. Her apron from work is still on. He seems to like it, gripping her ass, lifting it like a schoolgirl skirt, like the legs underneath are more naughty by what it covers up, “a private consultation.”

He shivers, and she likes the effect she has on this huge man. She presses him down to his own bed. In charge.

He takes his role seriously, watching her eyes, as he lays back and lets her crawl all over him.

“I’ll take all the help I can get.”

“I need to take a look at your skin,” she climbs off, and he groans mournfully, but arches so she can take his unzipped jeans down his legs. She keeps the underwear on, _for now._

“Hmm,” she straddles him again, hands on his torso.

“No sun damage,” she smirks, “not anywhere.”

He’s lovely. His skin is pure and pale and lovely. Maybe not as soft as anyone who worked with her, or any skin that had a routine pass over with some decent product. But Ben is a man and she’d seen so much worse than his natural state.

“Unlike me,” she jokes, her shoulders rolling as she shifts over him.

“Gorgeous freckles,” he grins up at her, “sun kissed.”

He arches again when she touches his nipple; she keeps her face straight but her stomach warms victoriously.

It took a real man to tolerate nipple-play; it took one very secure in his masculinity to look as into it as he does right now.

She pulls a jar out of her apron pocket, he raises his eyebrows.

“Don’t worry,” she warms the lotion between her hands, “I’ll be gentle.”

She starts at his collarbones. Circulation there was where things could get strained, so she gently used her fingertips to working the blood to flow over both sides of his clavicle. He kept trying to arch up into her, to kiss her and fuck her and do something other than this very slow form of foreplay.

He keeps touching her, trying to make it less one-sided.

It does not feel one-sided to her.

Moving down his chest, she gets to feel how strong he is. Pectorals tense under her fingers. Maybe, selfishly, she wants to play with him a little, be a tease, now that she can be slow with him and savor.

Those sensitive nipples of his do get slathered in lotion until they're hard and tight under her fingers, until he growls, hiding his face, arching under her like he's trying to seek revenge.

_Oh, he's blushing._

But she still savors; nice and slow.

Because she spent the better part of the last week picturing _fast_ and _hard_ and _secret_ with Ben.

Ben with the girlfriend. Ben who made her lust enough to break some principles: or at least deeply consider it.

Her touches to his belly make him buck when her fingers dig into his sides. He’s ticklish, sensitive, and his skin is soft as she works lotion onto him.

When she reaches his waistband, she leans down seductively.

“I have to get your back, just to be thorough.”

He growls, but she sits up off of him and doesn’t move, even when he tries to drag her down, until he complies with a frustrated grunt.

He presses his sulky face into the pillow after sending her puppy-dog-eyes that would make a lesser woman melt.

“It’s good for you,” she pleads, and he’s adjusting to lie luxuriously against the sheets underneath her.

It’s sweet, kittenish, the way he relaxes under her capable hands. Even if he seems annoyed, and _occasionally happen_ s to be rubbing his erection into the mattress for light relief.

They could be doing more, just about everything, but he clearly likes the free back rub he’s getting while she coats his skin with more lotion.

Charity Pot is a more neutral scent: he isn’t sniffing as curiously so she assumes he doesn’t need to warm up to it as much as say, a lavender or orange.

There’s something about the broadness of his shoulders from behind that makes her want to secure herself to him like a koala baby and never let go. Have him carry her around the city as long as she could hold on and feel his skin against hers.

She must remain professional. Even with her bare thighs squeezing around his waist to search his skin, her shorts taut between her legs from her seat astride him.

Maybe a little rolling of her hips helps.

She works the moisturizer down his arms, pinning his hands as she rubs it in. Burying her face in his hair, him bent over so good for her, to be able to reach for his impressive wingspan.

“When I’m done…” she teases because she so nearly is, “you can feel how soft I am; because I do this every day.”

The little cup of lotion goes _flying_ when he flips underneath her. That was one she was willing to sacrifice for the kiss he presses to her lips, winding his clean-smelling, now-supple arms around her to tangle her into the bed with a single deft roll into the mattress. She arches into him, sighing as he starts untying her apron.

“So glad you do house calls,” he deadpans, leaning back on his knees so she can strip underneath him.

“I take your body very seriously,” she says lightly, touching his chest with curious hands. “Have on first sight. I lik _ed-”_

Her breath hitches as he pulls her shorts down.

But he stops when they’re only around her knees, eyebrows raised as if to insist: _go on._

“I liked you. Immediately,” she swallows. “That’s never happened to me before.”

“You are,” he touches a large, warm hand to her bare stomach, “a consummate professional.”

“Hmm,” she giggles, nodding, liking the praise.

She’ll be his good little salesgirl; if the commission is that cock she’s so eager to see.

And have inside her.

_“I used to be,”_ he rolls her shorts down her legs, “a good boyfriend.”

She tenses, but he focuses his bowed head on undressing her. And keeps going.

“I felt like I needed to walk away. If I could walk away and prove that...your respect mattered more to me, I felt like I could come back and do this right. Can we?”

He shucks the shorts roughly over her feet, lashing them across his bedroom before bowing to kiss her.

“Can we start this on the right foot?”

“I mean,” she touches his face tentatively, frozen by the sudden urgency and tenderness from him, “Have I? Flirting with a guy who has a girlfriend?”

He nods desperately.

He kisses her wrists, her hands. Sniffing her skin huffily, like a bear: but a very dear bear to her.

“I want to smell _you,”_ he complains, and that in itself is his explanation.

She takes a shaky breath, her thighs tensing with want, and combs her fingers into his hair soothingly.

“It’s not _always_ honey…”

He smirks down at her.

“I still want to lick that sweet little honey trap...”

Her eyes nearly roll back in her head.

“When...were you looking at...the lips balms?” she manages softly; because he may have just killed her.

The store could overwhelm even her sometimes, and he dropped a few hundred dollars on product, so his retention skills-

“They were by the register. That’s you. Your smell.”

"Eye for details," she chokes out, still kind of stunned, but he's meticulously peeling her panties off in a fluid motion that sort of...

exactly...

proves her point.

His kiss has new confidence now that’s he’s made her swoon.

“We’ll go slow, if I need to prove to you... _whatever_ I need to prove to you.”

“The floor is yours,” she falls back on the sheets, peeling off her tee shirt as he lowers himself between her thighs, “prove away.”

He groans when his hands come to her belly as she sheds her bra next. She feels perfect, when he’s hunched over her, like something to be opened with delicacy and care. Precious.

“You’re as soft as you said,” he marvels with his touch, presses his smile against her collarbone. Kissing her freckles.

As touched by sun as he is untouched.

Lying together they are gold against pearl.

“Slow?” he asks again, crawling back on his mattress.

She’s dizzy. That sounds like a terrible idea to the throbbing in her sex; but her head clings to the anchor that keeps her from completely falling away.

Even if her lust has just about everything else swirling down the drain.

“Mhmm,” she agrees. “We’ll take it slow.”

He rubs his thumbs purposefully in circles on her hip bones, his eyebrows raised in a questioning expression.

She laughs at how innocent he pretends to be.

Rey raises her muscular thighs, the ones she poses so many glittery photos of soaking in a colorful swirl. Her knees settle at her chest.

As clear an invitation as he’s going to get.

His head dips to lick up her taste. She grips his hair tightly in her fingers. A little dry at the roots, but there’s a shampoo in stock that _-never mind, that thought can wait-_

He laps so obediently, so perfectly, that her whole body shudders when his tongue reaches inside her.

Digging first, then sliding into the way that the teasing licks open her up. She’s absolutely _runny,_ like she’s melting over his tongue, her thighs tensing over his shoulders, his hands greedily groping at her breasts. An area that they have skipped but he seems to keep wanting to remind her that he’ll get his time with them; they’ll get their due.

Her hand are shaking from pleasure when he drops further down onto the mattress, settling in to feast. He grabs her hips with those giant hands and gives them nowhere else to go but opened up to meet his mouth.

“Is it,” she can’t believe the words leave her lips, “is it like _honey?”_

Emboldened by a sunny sexual encounter at 17:00.

He lifts his mouth from her cunt with a sharp, wet sound. His lips are drenched with her.

“Better,” he insists, and dives back down; this time burying his nose into her clit to further prove his point.

 

* * *

 

"You really weren't kidding."

The honey soap he bought last week is a _sliver_ left in the dish.

She’s impressed with his shower; a scattering of the samples she gave him last week sit on the built-in-shelves. She loves a bath; but the water pressure and the blasting heat of his shower make the conversion seem pretty tempting. 

The offer _did she want to jump in the shower?_ was such a _yes, definitely_ impulse for her when it came to him.

But the marveling is how he managed to take a sizable chunk of soap and--

Rey swallows under the stream of water, staring up at him as he slicks back his wet hair.

“What did you _do_ to it?”

He cocks an eyebrow at her, gathers what’s left of the soap, and rubs a slow lather between their hands.

If _slow_ is showering with him after the oral sex of her life, impressing upon the way that the lotion has treated his gorgeous skin, and touching naked, wet bodies while exchanging sleepy kisses…

Then Rey can do slow.

Rey has always believed that no relationship is rendered meaningless simply by being over, that people are sent to meet the way that they do for a reason, that there is always something to learn from the lives that cross yours.

There was also a theory ruminating in the back of her mind for a long time that guys who are whipped at least exit the relationship knowing how to _properly_ eat pussy.

So now she needed to write Bazine a thank-you note.

“What do you think I did?”

He goes slow, massaging her knuckles. It’s her soap; it’s her mildest smell. A faint subtlety.

Diluted down to a wet slick that he can coat over his--

He’s been pressing kisses to her hands ever since she came here. She tries to pretend to forget that he takes little inhales for that very purpose.

Oh, it feels nice. Her joints crack a little bit from the strength of his fingers, he rubs the webs between delicately, kneads the bones in gentle flexes.

She shivers as she feels the slick and foam between their fingers, the digits tangling and groping, until he guides her soapy hand to his cock.

“What do you think, Rey?” he presses his mouth to the sharpness of her cheekbone, grunting and she squeezes his slippery cock and strokes him. “What do you think I pictured when I did it?”

“I-I don’t know,” she tries innocently; hoping he’ll talk more to fill in the gaps. Hopefully he’s got a dirty mouth, it makes the soap seem really necessary.

He does.

“Really?” he kisses her, wet and soft, so filthy that his tongue fills her by surprise. His hands grip her ass, drawing her belly to him so his cock nudges her tight skin with every stroke. “Because someone was posting some very naughty bath pictures on her instagram this week. And I did check; it’s _just_ been this week. Did something happen, hmm? Did something _change_ for you?”

She keeps stroking him, her thighs tensing, and he curls one massive hand around her inner thigh, opening her legs up to explore.

He has a point. Over just one week of him _liking_ every photo she posted she has gotten very risky with how much skin she’s been showing. Last night there was one of just the glitter-soaked undersides of her breasts and belly that she almost threw her phone across the room in terror after posting.

It was fine. Her face wasn’t in it.

And he _clearly_ saw it from the way he was looking down at her; water dripping down his features.

Liked it.

His fingers fill her fast, driving up into her cunt with a force that keeps her jelly-like legs from crumpling under her in pleasure. Her free hand cups the back of his neck for support, the other twisting her quick strokes to a rhythm that prompts a satisfied growl from him. Water runs down her face, so she has to clench her eyes shut, but it also weaves into her hair, flows down her neck, heats her shoulders and chest as he pleasures her.

“You are so goddamn naughty, Rey. Your slick little body, all covered in glitter. You could lure sailors to their deaths from that bathtub if you wanted to.”

She hiccups out a sweet laugh.

“Did you really think I _wasn’t_ going to jerk off in the shower with your smell all over my dick? You were teasing me, weren’t you?”

Shyly, she tucks her face in his shoulder before she nods.

“Yes, Ben.”

She could have said any amount of coy things; but the one that was truest made him clutch onto her, rutting into her fist with a low groan.

“Good girl,” he says finally, and it warms in her belly _that he came back for her,_ he loves touching her, he’s here and he _chose_ her.

His hands, which clearly appreciate a cunt as much as his mouth does, work her into a light orgasm. A freeing one, not the massive, world-shaking experience they had in his bed only a half hour ago. But she feels shivery and sweet as he makes her be under his touches.

She paints above his upper lip with some of the honey lather; marking the scent right under his nose. She can feel the reverberations of his groan when the scent hits him where he can’t escape it.

She is as hot and wet on the inside as she is on the outside, and knowing that seems to be the image he locks into; his eyes slightly glazed when he stares at her, his expression getting intense.

“I only wanted to lure one person,” she admits in a little voice. Like she needs to whisper to prevent it from echoing away from them and this moment. “So he’d belong to me.”

Nothing is hotter in this steamy room than his breath on her skin.

His cock pulses in her slippery little fist, painting her belly with his cum.

She steps back out of the shower stream so it doesn’t wash away. She strokes her fingers through his spend curiously, dancing it over the jumping, anxious muscles of her belly.

He in turn still has soap bubbles over his lip, the heel of his hand pressed there as if to trap the scent so it won’t leave.

Marking him with herself, with each other, in their odd way; belonging so fast that there was no way to make sense of it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah. You guys really like Lush. 
> 
> Can we compile the receipts of everyone who made a purchase from Lush because of this fic? I want to prove I deserve at least a gift basket from the company.
> 
>  
> 
> [We have Fanart!](https://twitter.com/tm2taughtmefam1/status/1085812229469917184)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you Aisling!
> 
> I might do more silly things with this, one-shots with specific products; so if you're ever in the need for a Reylo shower jelly smut scene you know who to call.


	3. Rump

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adding a little two-parter to hop on that Reylo Booty Train!

_“Darling?”_

Their bathroom is tiny, and cramped, and filled with a million black plastic jars of things he doesn’t understand. He’s used to his morning confusion; catching the fine print of a label, raising his eyebrows and wondering if teeth _needed_ tabs or if shampoo should be bar-shaped.

It made him feel bullish, too masculine, a disruptive force in her space long before he moved in with her. Since the overnights between them first started.

Ever since he entered her space on his own.

Rey is stumbling around the bedroom they share, her hair half-up, hastily getting dressed.

_“Mmm?”_

He can tell she's only listening as much as she's able. Trying to get out the door.

Not engaging in his seemingly daily mission to make her late for work.

Daylight is so bright and sharp it slices around her curves as she pads around in her bare feet. If he wasn’t so confused by the jar in his palm, he’d be glued to her little absent dance. Her determination to be on time, no matter his best efforts.

Genuine curiosity is why he speaks up about it; not trying to beat her in a game he's convinced he must win.

“Why do you have a jar of _‘bottom rub’_?”

She pauses in the doorway, her brows furrowed.

“Oh,” she looked at the container, labelled _“ **Rump”** _ in that signature white scrawl. _“_ That.”

“Yes, _this.”_

At this point instinctive, trained well by her, he’s unscrewing the cap for a smell, but what further shocks him is the untouched half on the surface of the rub; gold glitter over a peach-tinted lotion.

“You _like_ my ass,” she whispers defensively, like there is any doubt of that.

“I do,” he stares at her dumbly. Because there is literally no reason, he's given no indication, that she should doubt that.

He's given quite the contrary in the months they've been dating.

She heaves a pouty sigh.

“It’s for...it just keeps things _soft.”_

“And gold,” he observes, dipping a finger into the cream -denser than most of the lotions she brings home- and feels it melt like butter under the heat of his fingers rubbing in slow circles. The smell is familiar; she really does use this a lot because he _knows_ it. It's familiar.

“What else have you been hiding from me?” he wonders aloud, and Rey flushes red and vanishes shyly from the doorway of the bathroom. Frantically tossing things into her purse.

“Rey,” he almost breaks his toe on the bath caddy he got her for her birthday _-for the girl who has everything that can be enjoyed in a bath-_ as he rushes after her, “Rey, whatever alchemy it does, I’m grateful for it.”

Rey is the least vain person he knows, even when she’s wearing about a modest paycheck's worth of product on her skin at any given time. It’s not to keep up appearances. It’s meditative for her, he knows this. She gets embarrassed when he examines the purpose and function of her beauty regimen, which he only does sometimes and never means it cruelly. Just curiously.

Where his previously relationship was secretive: Bazine would never let him see that she actually had to work at her perfection, Rey on the other hand is an open book about her various lotions and potions in the framing that it makes her feel good, not that it makes her look better.

But her bottom rub seems to be a sore subject.

He follows her into the bedroom.

She’s got a tee shirt and underwear on, she had been getting ready when he posed his investigation of her beauty products specifically for her backside. It’s easy to look at now, with her lying on her stomach on the bed, hiding her face in a pillow.

He holds back a soft laugh.

Rey isn’t vain, but she’s a perfect subject for his spoiling. When she’s not working at the store, which she does with discipline and great skill, she’s lounging around their apartment doing absolutely nothing, as if she were born to, like his prize courtesan. Lotioned, pampered, barely dressed.

He had successfully turned her into a homebody. Which is nice, in how that was how he felt, so he had her to himself. Buttered up with sweet-smelling things, feeling properly cared for, and so receptive to his affections that way.

He inches behind her on the mattress, smoothing a hand up her bare thigh. Then his fingers meet the curve of her ass, he marvels.

“Soft,” he agrees.

Her ass is always peach-soft, perfect under his hands. It’s not a surprise to learn it has a little help with one of the jars in the bathroom. And he’d probably assume it was just a regular lotion with not intended specific use.

Her bottom rub is so adorable he wants to cry a little, kissing the sweet plump cheek under his hand.

“I want to thank you, darling.”

He always feels a little stiff and old-fashioned in their relationship. Rey is younger, and they come from very different worlds. His antiquated affections, his reserve, all of it seems odd next to someone as youthful and open as her.

His previous relationship was good with formal. Rey is different, galaxies apart, but she seems to like the disparity. Her, aproned and outgoing. Him, office-dwelling and private. She works retail at all hours of the day. He’s stuck at a desk for long ones while she’s often asleep in the apartment. He entertains himself the nights she closes, or takes her out late when she's done with a shift. She has to tolerate _the public,_ something he could never handle, and she rests accordingly.

But those differences were never deal-breakers. It’s just a way of introducing something new. She likes people, likes shopping. He likes their shared, trusting quiet. Dressing her up and taking her out. She likes pampering him inside their home.

Rey twists underneath him to look over her shoulder. Her pouting yielding a result she seems satisfied with.

“Don’t make fun of my lotion that’s just for my bum.”

And just like that, she’s already making fun of herself; and it’s _cute,_ and it’s more succinct and genuinely funny than anything he could say himself.

He shakes his head, clucking his tongue. _“I would never._ You keep this perfect little ass in such good condition for me. You’re so good to me. I would never make fun of you.”

He’s proven that wrong, not often, but with devastating accuracy, and she snorts out a laugh at the character he’s put on.

Sometimes, well, _often,_ he pretends he’s in more control than he really is.

He kisses the curve of her bottom, which is so pretty, with a gold sheen that before now he’s either thought was magic or just his imagination, each cheek looking like one of the gilded domes of a Russian cathedral.

“I need to get to work,” she protests as he pulls her undergarments down to examine what a good job she does taking care of her little ass.

“You need to let me show my appreciation.”

He shakes his head so she can feel how she’s not going anywhere yet. Humming into his kisses, vocalizing his pleasure towards her in a way that he so rarely does, but always makes her shiver when he pulls that move out.

He watches her tan thighs flexing.

Nips the flesh of her bottom.

And gathers her wetness from her cunt in his fingers.

Rey gasps when he slides two of them in, probing through how hot and wet she is, and sliding out with a twisting motion to draw her wetness for other uses. She sighs, high and needy, realizing he’s going to pleasure her ass.

She likes this.

He’d had experiences with anal, before Rey. Bazine wasn’t exactly a prude; and the act was effectively done and well received on both ends. Everything about their relationship had been like that.

But with Rey, it was like the filth of the gesture was introduced back in. She was the most hygienic person he’d ever met, it wasn’t literally dirty, but with his previous girlfriend he felt that they were all adults and with Rey he felt like his ownership of himself, his actions, was spiraling into her sense of perceived naughtiness. Reveling in it.

He liked that.

Likes it now, his slick-lubricated finger pressing into her ass, her body pushing backwards to meet his touch and the way she bites her lips like she’s misbehaving and hoping he doesn’t notice.

He loves her. It was so easy for that to sneak up on him.

“So perfect,” he praises.

She shoulders gives a little tremble under the tee shirt. He just keeps fingering her hole, feeling the muscles squeeze him.

The snugness is so tempting.

They’d tried to fit his cock in her ass just once. She had been very wine-drunk; they went to a fancy restaurant that she probably wouldn’t be able to afford on her own. Things like this didn’t bother him, but they bothered her, so she overcompensated by wanting to fool around in the toilets, drank twice the amount of wine her much-larger boyfriend did, and was grinding her ass into his lap -standing behind her on the train home- begging him to claim her somewhere new.

She was sufficiently tipsy when they got home, and he was accommodating, but his fingers and some controlled grinding between her cheeks managed to sate that craving at a time where serious damage could have been done if he’d persisted in her altered state.

Though the story sounded worse than it was; they both remembered the evening, including the restaurant, entirely fondly.

Probably because of his prudence.

He kisses her lower back, under the hem of her soft gray tee shirt, as she wriggles and even fucks back onto his fingers inside her. She sighs, relieved to be allowed to use him, and glances slyly over her shoulder on occasion. Pleased to have him do something naughty to her.

And she whimpers when he teases a second finger, in succession, not quantity, into her pussy to wet it to then join the other one in her ass.

Her eyes close and she groans at the stretch.

“So that was your secret,” he marvels again, his free hand cupping a cheek and then slapping the firm, soft skin. Gently, it’s not meant to hurt, but it is to see the supple flesh take the hit so well.

She laughs to herself, her shoulders shaking.

He smiles, even if she can’t see it.

Slick is dripping down her thighs. With nothing short of amusement; he slides a thumb through her lips, parting her sex, and plays with her clit while his fingers gently thrust.

He works her to a slow, lazy orgasm, while she protests her lateness and the state of the trains in the afternoon. He soothes her with crooning sounds and coos in response to every little moan she lets slip out. Pretending to help.

“Your black Millennium Falcon shirt is clean,” he muses aloud, as though he’s helping her dress for what goes under the apron she keeps in her purse and not actively hindering this process. Her responding flat look tells him just how _saintly_ he comes across right now, “there’s those shorts right on the floor. I bet that’s why you left them there yesterday; I didn’t even pick them up so you could just slide them on and be out the door.”

She grimaces: she's messy, he's clean. His teasing here about it is somehow worse than when he's actually almost breaking an ankle navigating their room.

“You’re not _actually_ helping,” she wrinkles her nose, shuddering when he rubs his cheek against the curve of her ass. His head appreciatively rests on her back, like he’s cuddling her bum.

Showing his preference for her efforts.

“Then just tell me what I can do for you, darling.”

“You know what you can do for me, Ben.”

His thumb makes a few wicked circles on her clit. Her inner muscles clench down on his fingers.

"Make you cum, Rey? Make this little ass squeeze my fingers tight, and watch your cunt beg for the same? It's weeping for me, just from your ass, you naughty thing..."

She falls down onto her elbows on the mattress when her orgasm takes control of her. He watches the muscles of her thighs seize with the outward ripples of pleasure. Her toes are curling in the sheets.

He knows. He’ll do it.

He’ll do it to earn back the efforts she put into whatever spell she’s cast on him.

He is the only person he can think of this way; knowingly bewitched, and extremely grateful.

 

* * *

 

 

 

He’s watching the mesmerizing swirl of gold glitter move like a balm over her ass.

She’s got both cheeks in her hands, coated in shimmer and massaging careful circles. Her fingers tug the navy-blue thong she’s wearing this way and that to ease the cream over her cheeks and hips. Working around the lace without staining it. The substance melts faster than it threatens the fabric.

He knows without looking at the label.

_Bottom rub._

It’s not the only time he’s been aware of her usage of it since that afternoon discovery. But it’s the first time he’s seen it applied, carefully at that, even after she’s lotioned the rest of herself.

Music blares from a tiny speaker, there’s steam from her shower on the mirror, and she’s distracted as she works, observing her reflection, the bathroom door open.

Residual eyeliner gums around her lashes, rimming her eyes darkly. Her hair twists in wet waves. Her skin is clean and fresh.

Ben loves her likes this.

A towel covers her chest, held up by pressing her belly to the counter and merely relying on the starch of the material to keep it that way. He wonders about the fabric softener they use for their laundry, if he should switch to a different brand so their towels just _slide_ down her and leave her perfectly naked in their bathroom the next time they do this.

And then she gives him a wicked smile through the mirror; her eyes knowing what he’s thinking about without him having to speak.

He grins sheepishly, entering the bathroom and feeling misted with lingering steam and the smell of her shower gel.

Happy Hippy- she was on a citrus kick again. He feels like he’s somewhere sunny and warm when he’s in her arms.

He picks up the container on the countertop for a smell. It’s not as pervasive as the usual products she brings him. And he teases his fingers along the lotion-coated skin. It does feel buttery, and warm.

“What’s it supposed to do?” he finds himself questioning.

Rey purrs from her spot under his chin. She nuzzles her brow to his jaw. Eyes flutter shut, lashes fanned out over her glowing, freckled cheeks.

She likes being asked these things. His curious little inquiries. She’s a natural salesgirl, an enthusiastic one, and she likes what she’s selling. The kind of dedicated employee who deserves lots of free samples. Her instagram was a skilled catalogue of the brand as a lifestyle; and her encyclopedic brain could back it up.

He never cared about _anything_ that much. It fascinates him to the point he wants to sit in an armchair and have her recite quarterly sales reports and the health benefits of essential oils at his knee. She’s so _good._ Glowing with potential.

“It’s to keep the skin from getting ashy,” she informs him.

And there is the other side of the coin.

He won’t call it a double standard because he’s on the benefitting side. Here she was slathering bottom rub on her ass twice a day, and here he was; not knowing that that was something he even had to worry about.

“I didn’t know that was a problem I could have,” he admits, and it’s an odd moment of vulnerability. Here was every perfect inch of her skin, her intoxicating scents, her lengthy baths and rituals.

Here he was.

Was _he_ trying enough?

She croons sympathetically, her eyes falling open as her head falls back against his shoulder.

“Your skin is so nice,” she assures him, “I love it.”

“I-”

His hands fist on the counter. She pivots between his arms, checking his blushing face.

“Ben,” she shakes her head gently, _“Ben.”_

This wave of self-consciousness surprises him as much as it does her. Women had always kept these efforts a mystery from him. Rey does it for herself, she always has, but there was a fear in him that she was trying so much harder, and it wasn’t fair to her-

Rey turns off the music.

“Would you like to try it?”

She’s got the jar in her hand.

Sensing his panic.

He swallows and dips his fingers into the rub. Catching part of the undisturbed surface, the dusting of gold glitter on top.

Her laugh is a rumbling murmur, her body swiveling entirely around and unbutton the slacks he put on for their dinner out. The towel drops to the floor. She pushes his trousers down to his knees, boxer-briefs as well, and palms his ass, a cheek in each hand.

 _“I love your ass,_ ” she grins up at him, her smile genuine. “Thank you for letting me do this.”

And she wraps her fingers around the two digits he holds extended, covered in orange and gold, and swipes it off to use. Taking his sample of it into her own hands, she slowly massages it against his bared skin.

He bows his face into her bare shoulder.

“Did I need it badly?”

His voice is quieter than he means it to be.

Her lower lip purses at the embarrassment in his tone. He can’t un-hear the word _ashy._

“No,” she shakes her head. “It’s more about, for me, making the difference as an embellishment. Maybe it’s a placebo. Maybe it doesn’t do anymore than a regular lotion. But when I put a little gold glitter on my bum and feel your hands on my skin that I tried to make nice for you, maybe it makes me feel good. Do you understand?”

He moans as she kneads the cream into the curves of his backside, a part of his body he’s chosen to ignore up until now outside of basic, in his case probably obsessive, hygiene. Her smile is cheeky while she gropes and plays with the skin she’s treating.

“You’re enjoying this far too much.”

“Mhmm,” she raises her eyebrows at him, “say _‘thank you, darling’_ because I take such good care of you.”

She does.

His eyes fall on the wooden bath caddy on the floor.

That sleek-surfaced plank he’d gotten for her baths had a variety of uses. Propping up books, keeping a glass of wine handy, helping as an available surface for her product posts. But there was something deliberate about the size of it, he’d researched it before committing to the right one, testing the weight it could bear and making sure the surface was smooth enough to _never_ harm her perfect skin-

-perfect for hoisting her out of the glittery bathwater and seating her on it, for him to lean forward and feast between her perfect thighs while he sat in the tub. For her to prop up her feet on when he grew bored of their galaxy-dipped soaking, needing to part those knees and stroke her steam-warmed sex-

She’s squeezing him with both hands now, bringing him back to the spark in her eyes.

Sometimes she sets out some kind of treatment for him on that tray caddy. A salt scrub. A face mask. Candles. Some berries, just for eating, for feeding him from her lovely hands as she dotes on his body in the tub.

Or she hoists herself up onto her comfortable seat upon it and imperiously sets about washing his hair, her legs in the water. 

Rey always ended up in his baths. And he in hers.

And one notorious cold season she had the surface of the caddy cramped with Vicks Rub and medicated shower melts, trying to get him to break through the steamy fog after days of sniffling and shivering, combing his hair out of his eyes and doing everything in her power to wrench a laugh out of him. Kissing him, despite his protests that this very thing would happen, until she caught his fever three days later and needed the same amount of pampering with the addition of a lot of noodles and classical music.

He never anticipated she’d be half as good at taking care of him as she is at taking care of herself; but she’s actually much better at it.

They take care of each other.

“Thank you, darling,” he chokes out.

He would have dropped the slightly too-formal nickname if it didn't make her shiver every single time.

She’s naked, save for a lacy blue thong, and he’s fully dressed but exposed from mid-thigh to lower back.

They have a dinner reservation.

She gropes his ass meaningfully.

Fuck the reservation.

Yet too soon, she pulls away.

“You’ll get your turn,” she warns purposefully, her eyes dark.

Ben swallows. Caught in her spell irreversibly.

“But I want a steak tonight. A ridiculously expensive steak. I want to get all dressed up. And I want to drink wine and not wear a bra and tease you mercilessly.”

Her fingers, in passing, swipe between his cheeks and tease the hole with the gentlest of touches while he stands there stupidly, pants down, in their bathroom.

Her intention is clear. They'll do all that. And then maybe she'll have his ass.

He’s hard in an instant.

But she’s pulling on the blue dress she’d picked out for the occasion. Gazing naughtily at him as she screws the cap back onto the jar of bottom rub.

It's for another time.

Rey did make him a promise.

Oh, this is going to be fun.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two is Ben's turn.

**Author's Note:**

> I promise chapter two is where it gets filthy.


End file.
